The BBC has admitted it breached its own guidelines by throwing over its entire network to Bono The Bore for a whole week when U2's 'No Line On The Horizon' album was released last February.

Well, OK, not the entire network for the whole week, but it felt that way as Beeb bosses - mainly men of a certain age, I suspect - handed over buckets of licence fee-funded telly and radio airtime to a band that peaked in 1987. As part of their free gift to Universal's marketing department, the Beeb also developed a special U2=BBC logo.

Commercial radio trade body RadioCentre submitted a formal complaint to the Beeb about its efforts to plug the lacklustre U2 album, while Tory MP Nigel Evans told reporters: "This is the sort of publicity money can't buy, why should licence fee-payers shoulder the cost of U2's publicity?"

The Corporation's editorial complaints unit has now reviewed the whole thing, and conceded the Beeb's U2 week amounted to "undue prominence for commercial products or organisations" and in doing so breached BBC editorial guidelines.

The unit didn't criticise the whole of the Beeb's U2 output - to be fair any big band with an album to sell is going to crop up on a relatively high number of shows in promo week - but they said the U2=BBC logo "gave an inappropriate impression of endorsement" and that it was wrong for Radio 1 to say the BBC was "part of launching this new album" during an interview between Bono and the station's Zane Lowe. Radio 1 and the BBC's logo chiefs have both promised to read the report very carefully, so that's good.

The complaints unit also upheld another RadioCentre complaint about the Beeb's coverage of another pop bore - Chris Martin and Coldplay. RadioCentre complained that a 'Radio 1 presents Coldplay' website included links to agents selling tickets to the band's tour. The unit agreed that this was "not in keeping with the BBC's guidelines on links to external websites".